Say you’re living in an apartment building or neighborhood with good radio-wave access to a dozen other households. You could sign up for a $50-a-month DSL account, set up a Wifi node, and share the signal with four other paying neighbors. Speakeasy takes care of the billing, charging everyone their fraction. Presto: You’re all getting broadband for $10 a month, and saving about $500 a year each.

Sure, there’ll be the occasional crunch in bandwidth if everyone tries to download 100-meg movie files at the same time. But quite frankly, how likely is that to happen? My girlfriend and I have been sharing a Wifi node for months now, and we both download high-bandwith stuff — music files, online video, big pieces of software — and I’ve never once noticed a problem.

This is a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant idea. I hope other ISPs pick up on it, but I’m not holding my breath.